Sarah Burke
I was sad to read about the passing of freestyle skier Sarah Burke, easily the best known female freestyle skier out there who was highly respected for both her skiing as well as her tireless advocacy of her sport. She helped push superpipe skiing into the Olympics and was a four-time Winter X Games gold medalist. On January 10, Burke fell on a superpipe training run and suffered cardiac arrest soon after. She was rushed to the hospital where she hung on for ten days before ultimately succumbing to her injuries.
Burke's accident brings up an important issue that the snowboarding community is going to need to deal with- how big is too big? The snowboarding blog Agnarchy has a good piece looking at the issue of halfpipes getting steadily bigger. The current generation superpipe is 22' high, the first halfpipe grooming machine cut walls that were 10' back in the early 90s. From they have only gotten bigger and steeper— in 2001 the wall was raised from 15' to 18' for the US Open while today's biggest pipes have 22' walls set at a 18-degree downhill pitch.
Professional snowboarders get paid to put life and limb at risk and are driven to push the boundaries of the sport but should be doing so within a framework that doesn't unnecessarily set them up for serious injury and death. I hope the snowboarding community keeps this in mind the next time there's an urge to make the superpipe even more super.
